I love teaching writing. I wish I knew about the Six Traits when I was in school! Imagine just having to know SIX steps to make your writing come alive! (Ideas - content, Voice, Organization, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions - editing & revising) 

I'm SO proud of my sixth graders' short stories!!!! 

I posted the standards for the week, and then I took the most difficult words and defined them in the slot below so EVERYBODY would understand the standards. :)

For our culminating activity for the text we've been reading, teams are making a poster by answering the three questions on their task card. Each team had two of the same questions but question #2 was different. My goal for this lesson was to focus on higher level questioning and having students use team work for this activity. Teams will share their posters in a new and fun way next week.

The activity we focused on before this poster was an AVID reading strategy called Marking the Text or Close Reading. Students read a passage and answered ten questions. The next day we read the same passage and they numbered the paragraphs, circled key words, and underlined important phrases and descriptions. The following day the students read the passage again and Marked the Text by writing questions or statements in the margins. After we finish these posters, I am going to give the same ten questions to the students again and am looking forward to seeing higher scores because of our CLOSE READING!

I'm proud and happy with all of my classes and students! I want to thank their families for their continued support ... :)

Aloha,

Mrs. Manoske

P.S. The above picture shows JP, Sydney, Anthony, and Kenny working on their culminating activity. 

Mariana, Alex, Pherson, and Tatiana working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Eileen, Haizen, Brian, and Lily working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Kaila, Bryson, and Aaron working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Paul and Brandon working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Courtney, Liana, Teddy, and Katelyn, working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Shaysi's team is working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Kalista, Shelby, Sarah, and Patrick are working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Jed, Indica, John, and Zayanna are working on their culminating activity. (See below for the details about it.)

Vocabulary learning! 

I bought this book to help me teach lessons on "reading closely." My goal is to empower my students to really focus on and examine different elements of texts closely. May this kind of reading become a habit forever. :) I'll add more information as we go...

Aloha!

Cindy Manoske